Empirical Legal Studies

JELS, 3:1

The most recent (and just published) issue of JELS (3:1, Mar. 2006) includes, among other articles, a piece by Cathy Sharkey (Columbia) that examines sexual harassment awards and extends prior work by Sunstein and Shih.  Her findings include a "consistent, and statistically significant, positive relationship between punitive and compensatory damages."  Those interested in a regression "primer" will want to see a piece by my colleagues Ted Eisenberg and Marty Wells that methodically assesses the relation between punies and comps in "blockbuster" cases.

Judicial Selection Scheme Unconstitutional?

Those of you who study judicial selection may find this article of interest: Federal Court Determines Party Bosses Control N.Y. Judicial Nominations.

Inter-coder Reliability

Is there a debate over the various measures of inter-coder reliability? For a short discussion, as well as a practical guide for testing inter-coder reliability in content analysis, I found this: Lombard, Snyder-Duch & Campanella Bracken, Practical Resources for Assessing and Reporting Intercoder Reliability in Content Analysis Research Projects. I've used the more conservative Cohen’s kappa to measure inter-coder reliability.  See Landis & Koch, The Measurement of Observer Agreement for Categorical Data, 33 Biometrics 159 (1977).  But, is there a preferred measure?  If so, why?  Is simple percent agreement always disfavored?  Is there an article that thoroughly compares the options? Comments are open.

Peer-Reviewed versus Student Edited Journals

I thought I'd start off by going back to a previous post by Michael concerning trends in law scholarship publishing. 

Part of the barrier to empirical work in legal scholarship has been the tradition of student-edited journals.  This problem has been partially remedied by the advent of new peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and an increasing focus in the law and economics journals and other peer-reviewed journals on empirical work.

Having published empirical pieces in both peer-reviewed and student-edited law journals, I have come to the conclusion that student-edited journals can play an important role in improving and promoting empirical legal scholarship.  I see three potential advantages to student-edited journals.

First, student-edited journals have an advantage in cite-checking.  In many (if not most) cases, this is less important in empirical scholarship than in, say, traditional doctrinal analysis.  However, empirical work can turn on the dating of legal change (for example, when did a state adopt an exception to at-will employment?) or the coding of various opinions (was a decision pro-government power or not?).  Peer-review rarely involves checks for coding, but focuses on assumptions and methodologies.  In contrast, students have both the manpower and skill set to check coding.  In the case of a study on case-outcomes, they could randomly sample some cases used in the study and code them themselves to see if the author was honest and careful.  Legal changes are often difficult to date (even in the case of a statute, the effective date is often different from the date of passage).  The prior law that is being supplanted must also be understood to determine if the legal change is a significant departure.  This involves traditional cite-checking and, given the coding issues of many studies, could substantially improve empirical work (or force greater disclosure).

Second, many schools now have empirically-trained scholars (or fellow travelers) on their faculty.  Students thus have access to informal peer-review of a sort and could also access scholars from other departments within their school.  Of course, students would want to pre-screen papers and send only two or so an issue out for review to avoid burdening faculty.  Some peer-reviewed journals offer small honoraria for review, and I see no reason why student edited journals could not do the same.  Such an informal process may have drawbacks by increasing the randomness of rejections, but the ability to simultaneously submit offsets this in part.

Finally, the main objection to the publication of empirical work in law reviews is that students miss important technical issues that would not go unnoticed in a peer-reviewed journal.  I think that, on balance, this is true and will not be fully remedied by informal review.  On the other hand, student journals have an offsetting adavantage: special symposium issues and frequent publication.  The Stanford Law Review has a couple famous issues on hot-button topics where scholars have squared off against each other.  The equivalent in peer-reviewed journals would be the publication of the referee reports.  And in contrast to the famously slow peer-review process (in addition to the publication of far fewer issues), law journals can publish response pieces fairly quickly.

These are just impressions, and I believe that many, if not most, empirical articles are not suited for student edited journals.  In the right case, however, the student-editing process presents significant advantages.

Religion in the Courts

The Volokh Conspiracy discusses here Greg Sisk's (St. Thomas) empirical article considering how traditional and minority religions fare in court.  If this piece interests you, see also his earlier article (along with Heise and Morriss) which is an empirical study of religious freedom decisions.

How Judges Perceive Empirical Work

Should judges or others be concerned with empirical work?  Judge Harry Edwards has sought to "debunk the myth that ideology is a principal determinant in decision making."   He dislikes the "heedless observations of academic scholars who misconstrue and misunderstand the work of judges," and their "so-called 'empirical studies'."  See  Edwards, 84 Va. L. Rev. 1335 (1998).   Charles Grover Haines once wrote, "The results showing to what extent justice is affected by personality of the judge were so startling and so disconcerting that it seemed advisable to discontinue the comparative tables of the records of the justices."  17 Ill. L. Rev. 96 (1922).  Perhaps, in order to alleviate any concerns, we, as scholars, must do a better judge explaining how our empirical findings might help us better evaluate and possibly improve the judicial process (e.g., judicial selection methods, how to select judicial panels, the costs and benefits of certain interpretive philosophies, etc.).   Comments are open.

Guest Blogger: Max Schanzenbach

I am very pleased to introduce Max Schanzenbach who, beginning this week Monday, will become our first week-long guest blogger.  Max joined the faculty of the Northwestern University School of Law in 2003.  In addition to receiving his J.D. from Yale University, he also has a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale.  His primary areas of research interest are employment law, criminal sentencing, and trust law.  He has published in such journals as the American Law and Economics Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Journal of Legal Studies, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

Fun with Data

Often scholars use data to write more light-hearted pieces.  For an analysis of which Supreme Court Justices invoke the most laughter at Oral Argument, see Jay Wexler, Laugh Track, 9 Green Bag 2d 59 (2005).  If you're interested to see if Supreme Court Justices gamble on Presidential Elections, see Supreme Court Justices Really Do Follow the Election Returns, PS: Political Science & Politics, Vol. 37 (Oct. 2004).   Any other "fun" pieces out there?  Comments are open.

Research Methodology Courses in Law Schools

As a follow-up to Jason’s post about teaching empiricism, it could be a helpful service of the ELS Blog to compile a list of the research methodology courses taught within law schools. Naturally, traditional legal research courses do not count for these purposes. (We don’t need a list of 180 first-year legal research courses, even if they really are empirical.)

Anyone who would like to help along the process of compiling this list can post a comment or e-mail me directly ([email protected]), preferably with a link to a course description or even a syllabus. Since course catalogs do not always reflect what is actually being taught, these responses would be of great help in figuring out what is really going on within the law schools. I’ll post the list sometime soon and update it as needed.

Symposium: Open Access Publishing & Legal Scholarship

Lewis & Clark Law (Portland, Oregon) is hosting a symposium on Open Access Publishing and the Future of Legal Scholarship on March 10, 2006.  Here's the summary:

"Scholarship and research reporting in the sciences and medicine has, in the last few years, been shifting to an open access approach. The combined power of the web, universal document formats (e.g., Adobe’s Public Document Format), and powerful search technology (e.g., Google), has fueled a dramatic expansion in this open access approach in just the last four years. The result is that the global interested public can find and use scholarship at a far lower cost, to a far greater degree, than ever before. Interestingly, the open access publishing model has not yet become as popular in legal scholarship as in other fields. Why has legal scholarship lagged in the open access publishing movement? Should law schools, who do the most to fund both the production and publication of legal scholarship, push toward an open access publishing approach?"

This symposum is relevant to Michael's earlier post on Publication Options and "whether law prof types see (or perceive) shifts in overall law school culture or tenure expectations germane to scholarly publication options."  Can Open Access publishing work in law, and what would be the future of the Law Reviews?  This Symposium's presentations seem geared to these questions.

Stats Analysis Software Preferences

Although I'd prefer not to trigger a "Holy War" (see, e.g.,  "Word v. WordPerfect" or, perhaps, "Tastes Great v. Less Filling") I invite comments, suggestions, observations, etc. relating to the various stats software packages on the market.  In particular, two specific discussion threads strike me as possibly useful.  First, which packages work the best for empirical legal scholarship and why.  Second, what would you advise a colleague (or student) making their initial stats software selection.

To be sure, products like Stats Transfer make stats software selections far less critical.  That said, I analogize the stats software selection to a law prof's casebook selection.  Due to a necessary front-end investment of time and energy path dependency tends to explain a lot of post-initial decision behavior.  Also, for many (most?) initial software selections pivot on whatever their professors used/required for statistical analysis courses in college or graduate (and, increasingly, law)  school.

Two final points.  First, a fairly thorough and objective comparison of the Stata, SPSS, and SAS packages is found here.  Second, in the interest of full disclosure, insofar as I use both Stata and SPSS on a daily basis I have no "dog in this fight."

Update on the PACER Database

Nancy King (Vanderbilt) recently alerted me to an unfolding development that will potentially implicate researchers who use the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database, an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and from the U.S. Party/Case Index.  (For more general info on PACER, click here.)

Advisory Committees for the Federal Rules have circulated proposed rules designed to comply with a recent statutory mandate  "to protect privacy and security concerns relating to electronic filing of documents and the public availability . . . of documents filed electronically." Researchers who turn to PACER for data (and others) may be interested in what limitations may be put upon the information that is available from federal court files.  The  proposed appellate, criminal, civil, and bankruptcy rules have been circulated for comment.  Comments are now posted on the Federal Rulemaking website (here).

Survey of Income and Program Participation

The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) is a multi-panel, nationally representative data set created by the U.S. Census.  SIPP respondents are asked questions about their participation in income maintenance programs, such as welfare and unemployment compensation, their household and family composition, employment and earnings, access to services, including health insurance and child-care, assets, and other topics.

Lauren Willis (Loyola LA) informs me that if you are interested in doing empirical work that may use the SIPP data, you should be aware that the President's FY2007 budget calls for the elimination the SIPP.  For more information or to weigh in on the debate, visit the website of The Center for Economic Policy and Research here and here.

Yoon & Rothstein on "Mismatch in Law School"

Future Guest Blogger Albert Yoon (Northwestern) and Jesse Rothstein (Princeton) have posted an empirical paper entitled Mismatch in Law School  on SSRN.  The Abstract =

"An important criticism of affirmative action policies in  admissions is that they may hurt minority students who are  thereby induced to attend selective schools. We use two  comparisons to identify so-called mismatch effects in law  schools, with consistent results. Black students attain better  employment outcomes than do whites with similar credentials. Any  mismatch effects on graduation and bar exam passage rates are  confined to the bottom quintile of the entering credentials  distribution, where selection bias is an important, potentially  confounding factor. Elite law schools' use of affirmative action  thus does not appear to generate mismatch effects."

AALS Call for Scholarly Papers

"To encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship and to broaden participation by new law teachers in the Annual Meeting program, the Association is sponsoring its twenty-second annual Call for Scholarly Papers.  Those who will have been full-time law teachers at an AALS member or fee-paid school for five years or fewer on July 1, 2006 are invited to submit a paper on a topic related to or concerning law."  More details here.

Fellowship Announcement

Washington University School of Law
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Empirical Legal Scholarship

The Washington University School of Law is offering a one-year postdoctoral fellowship for scholars with Ph.D.s in political science, economics, sociology, statistics, or other social sciences with interests in empirical legal scholarship. The Fellow will conduct their own research, participate in an on-going research seminar, and collaborate with law school faculty. There are no teaching responsibilities. Candidates must possess a Ph.D. at the time of appointment. Salary will be competitive and commensurate with experience. The fellowship will be for a term of one year, with renewal possible. Applicants should send a curriculum vita, three letters of recommendation, a writing sample, and a statement of planned research to: Professor Andrew D. Martin, Campus Box 1203, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, 63130. Applications will begin being considered on February 15, 2006.

The Olympics and Empirical Scholarship?

Here's some light reading (pointed out to me by a future Guest Blogger).  The NY Times has printed an interesting discussion of statistical problems inherent in the new method for scoring ice skating competitions.  Read it here.

Publication Options

I'm curious about whether law prof types see (or perceive) shifts in overall law school culture or tenure expectations germane to scholarly publication options.  If so, when it comes to decisions about where to place scholarship how are folks assessing such options as traditional student-edited law reviews, faculty-edited peer-reviewed journals (in law or other fields), and university press books?  (Obviously, book projects are different in both degree and kind.)

The Polls - Supreme Court Awareness

In January, FindLaw released the results of its most recent Supreme Court Awareness survey, a simple survey asking respondents to name the nine Supreme Court justices. At least one other blog (CrimProf) has posted the results, but it is useful to view the new results alongside past ones. I am aware of two other similar surveys, Findlaw's first Supreme Court Awareness survey in 2003 and Luntz Research's Three Stooges/Supreme Court survey in 1995.

Together, these three surveys reveal a fairly stable level of knowledge--or perhaps a stable lack of knowledge. Over half the population cannot name even a single sitting Supreme Court justice. Of those who can name one or more justices, the results are largely consistent in all three surveys. O'Connor was the most well-known in all three; Stevens and Breyer were the least well known. And although Thomas appears less well-known now than in 1995, most of the remaining variation in the surveys is likely within the range of sampling error. (Scalia may be slightly more well known now than in 1995.) One major difference in the December 2005 survey is that Chief Justice Roberts was a correct answer, not Rehnquist.  But despite Roberts' confirmation in September and all of the media coverage that went along with it, only 16% could recall his name by December.

Here are the results:

       8/1995                      6/2003                    12/2005
O'Connor    31%       O'Connor    25%        O'Connor   27%
Thomas       30%       Thomas       21%        Thomas      21%
Rehnquist    8%        Rehnquist   10%        Roberts     16%
Ginsburg      7%       Ginsburg        9%       Scalia         13%
Scalia            6%       Scalia            9%        Ginsburg    12%
Souter          4%       Souter           4%        Kennedy      7%
Kennedy       4%       Kennedy        4%        Souter         5%
Breyer          1%       Breyer           2%       Breyer         3%
Stevens        1%       Stevens         1%        Stevens       3%

zero              55%     zero             65%      zero            57%
one               16%     one+             35%      one+            43%
two               11%
three            17%

n=1200                     n=1000                      n=1000

While the specific ability to rattle off Supreme Court justices is not particularly important in and of itself, the public's poor performance in these surveys is a good indication that little is known about the Court in general. As for the Stooges, however, public knowledge appears more robust. In the 1995 survey, 67% of respondents could name three or more of the Stooges. Only 13% failed to name any. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any more recent Stooge data.

Sources:

1995 Survey: Joan Biskupic, Has the Court Lost Its Appeal?, Washington Post, Oct. 12, 1995, at A23; Richard Morin, Unconventional Wisdom, Washington Post, Oct. 8, 1995, at C5.

2003 Survey: FindLaw /PR Newswire

2005 Survey: FindLaw /Ipsos

The Stooges:
Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Curly Joe. (And Joe Besser?)

IRB FAQs

A lot of interest and discussion resulted from my earlier post about how to work with Institutional Review Boards.  Wake Forest Law Professors Mark Hall and Ron Wright have developed a set of FAQs about legal research and IRBs.  The IRB FAQs are now available here.

Guest Bloggers

We hope this blog will encourage discourse among scholars by providing a forum where individuals can discuss their current empirical research or simply discuss any of a wide range of issues related to empirical legal studies that they find of interest or related to current events.  To this end, a number of distinguished faculty--including law professors, economists, sociologists, and political scientists-- have agreed to be week-long guest bloggers:

• Max Schanzenbach (Northwestern)
• John Pfaff (Fordham)
• Sara Benesh (Wisc.-Milwaukee)
• Wendy Martinek (Binghamton)
• Albert Yoon (Northwestern)
• Andrew Morriss (Case)
• William Henderson (Indiana)
• Tonja Jacobi (Northwestern)
• Stefanie Lindquist (Vanderbilt)
• Howard Gillman (USC)
• Lee Epstein (Washington University/Northwestern)
• Tracey George (Vanderbilt)
• Rebecca Sandefur (Stanford)
• Jeffrey Segal (SUNY-Stony Brook)
• Anne Joseph (Berkeley)
• Andrew Martin (Washington University)

Please see the schedule on the right column of the website.  We will also have blog forums.  (The subject of a future post.)  Thank you all for agreeing to participate.

OnLine Stats Resources

One increasingly frequent response to colleagues and students who approach me periodically with an array of statistical and methodological questions is to alert them to a wonderfully rich resource in the form of a site hosted by UCLA's Academic Technology Services group. Many of its resources are online and might assist many with questions ranging from the general to the software package specific (e.g., Stata, SPSS). The site (here) is certainly worth a quick visit for anyone interested.

Call for Papers - GPSA

The Georgia Political Science Association will hold its annual meeting November 16-18, 2006 in Savannah, Georgia. The deadline for proposals is July 1, 2006.

Are IRBs Unconstitutional?

Philip Hamburger (Columbia) discusses IRBs and argues here that federal regulations on Institutional Review Boards "would appear to violate the First Amendment."

Working with IRBs

Joe Miller (Lewis & Clark) makes the following useful comment below: "I think it would be helpful to see discussion on this blog about IRBs, and the learning curve for law profs in working with their home IRBs. I attended the AALS January 2006 meeting and don't recall seeing or hearing, amid all the encouragement for more empirical work, a word about IRBs (what they are, how they work, etc.)."

Every school's IRB is quite different, especially in those schools that have few clinical trials and hospital reasearch (like my home institution Marquette University) versus those who have large research hospitals (like my alma mater The University of Chicago).  IRBs usually have less red tape in the former.    As far as advice, my own suggestions are (1) visit your school's IRB website and (2) get to know the people who work at your home IRBs as they can make the process much easier for you.   I think the big issue for law professors, who rarely use IRBs, is that they do not know when/if they are required to consult them.  Any advice or comments on this would be greatly appreciated.  Comments are open.

Inaugural Empirical Legal Studies Conference

As one of its co-organizers I feel duty-bound to alert those interested to the inaugural Empirical Legal Studies Conference, which will be held at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas, on Friday 27–Saturday 28 October 2006. The conference will feature presentations of original empirical legal scholarship by leading scholars from a diverse range of fields.  More info is found here  (links for this and other upcoming conferences are located under the title "Conferences" on this blog's right column).

The Empirical Legal Studies Conference is jointly organized by Cornell Law School, NYU School of Law, and the University of Texas Law School. For those who like to really plan ahead, the 2007 and 2008 conferences will be held at New York University School of Law and Cornell Law School, respectively.

Surveying Judicial Clerks

According to Canon 3D of the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees, “A judicial employee should never disclose any confidential information received in the course of official duties except as required in the performance of such duties.... A former judicial employee should observe the same restrictions on disclosure of confidential information that apply to a current judicial employee, except as modified by the appointing authority.” 

How much help does this rule provide when a researcher wants to survey former judicial clerks?  Clearly, it would be unethical for a curent clerk to disclose information about a pending case (see also Ethics for Federal Judicial Law Clerks).  Fomer judicial clerks have been chided or received negative press for talking about specific high-profile cases (e.g., Vanity Fair's Bush v. Gore article) or writing a tell-all book (e.g., Lazarus'  Closed Chambers). Some inside-info has not been controversial (Hutchinson's The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox).  I'm already curious as to how Weiden and Ward's Sorcerers' Apprentices will be viewed when released. (Does anyone have an release date?  Weiden himself describes the book as "an empirical and historical analysis of Supreme Court law clerks.")

While the word "confidential information" in the Code likely includes information about the decision-making process in a given case, does it include all information that a clerk learns about his or her judge (e.g., Will he consider legislative history?  Does she look to rule on procedural grounds?)?  My own co-authored research suggests that some clerks (or some judges who presumably could grant permission) believe that it is inappropriate to answer questions about judicial interpretive approaches.  But it is a well-known practice for attorneys at law firms to ask colleagues about judges for whom they clerked.  If this knowledge is considered "confidential information," then it would be improper for former clerks to practice before the circuits in which they clerked (though often they must wait a year or two after their term ends).

Former judicial clerks may have important information that can help us better understand the judicial process.  What information would be most useful?  What of this information should be available (i.e. what information should former clerks feel free to share)?  Comments are open.

Abstract - Judicial Elections

Melinda Gann Hall (Michigan State) and Chris Bonneau (University of Pittsburgh) offer a positive take on judicial elections in the current issue of the American Journal of Political Science. Here is the abstract:

We assess whether quality challengers in state supreme court elections have a significant impact on the electoral successes of incumbents and whether the electorate seemingly makes candidate-based evaluations in these races. To address these questions, we examine 208 elections to the states' highest courts from 1990 through 2000 in the 21 states using partisan or nonpartisan elections to staff their benches. From a Heckman two-stage estimation procedure that takes into account factors influencing challengers' decisions to run as well as factors affecting the electorate's choices among candidates, we find that quality does matter. Experienced challengers significantly lessen the electoral security of incumbents, and the electorate appears to evaluate challengers' qualifications. These findings stand in stark relief to traditional notions that the electorate is incapable of responding to candidate stimuli beyond incumbency and that judicial elections inherently are an ineffective means for securing popular control over the bench.

Melinda Gann Hall and Chris W. Bonneau, "Does Quality Matter? Challengers in State Supreme Court Elections," 50 American Journal of Political Science 20-33 (2006).  

Call For Great Ideas, Part I

Are there any recent or emerging methodological developments in the empirical legal studies field that deserve greater attention and discussion--either because they represent innovations that you consider to be important/worthwhile or, perhaps, because they represent moves that you consider to be problematic?

[For the record, inspiration for this post comes from a similar post crafted by Howard Gillman and  circulated a few months ago on the Lawcourts listserv.]

Updated Segal/Cover Scores

Jeffrey Segal recently updated the Segal/Cover perceived ideology scores by adding Samuel Alito. Alito rates a .1 on a scale that runs from 0 to 1.0, with 0 being the most conservative and 1.0 being the most liberal. The Court now lines up as follows:

    Ginsburg    .680
    Breyer       .475
    Kennedy    .365
    Souter       .325
    Stevens     .250
    Thomas     .150
    Roberts    .120
    Alito          .100
    Scalia        .000

These data and more, including the perceived ideology scores for retired justices from Hugo Black (.875) to Sandra Day O’Connor (.415), can be found at Professor Segal’s website.
 

For the details on this measure, see Lee Epstein & Jeffrey Segal, Advice and Consent 109-111 (Oxford 2005); Jeffrey Segal, Lee Epstein, Charles Cameron, & Harold Spaeth, "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Revisited," 57 Journal of Politics 812-823 (1995); Jeffrey Segal & Albert Cover, "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices," 83 American Political Science Review 557-565 (1989).

   

Must Reads & Teaching Empiricism

I teach a seminar on judicial decision-making that focuses on the courts as political institutions, emphasizing the social science literature on the courts.  An issue often batted around by those who teach these judicial behavior courses is what major books should be assigned.  I think two are a must read:

(1) The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited by Segal & Spaeth

(2) The Choices Justices Make by Epstein & Knight

I also like to assign Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope.  

The real difficulty in teaching a judicial behavior course is helping students understand empirical methodologies.  Thus, I asked the following question to a number of colleagues: Can anyone recommend an introductory text for students who are trying to better understand the basic statistics and regression analyses used in the many empirical papers on judicial decision-making?  It seems there are few options.  I received the following suggestions:

• Marija Norusis' SPSS Guide to Data Analysis
• Andy Field’s Discovering Statistics
• Paul Allison's Multiple Regression : A Primer

I have not used any of these, and instead have explained basic statistical analyses using particularly accessible and easy to understand articles.  Does anyone have any other suggestions?  Comments are open.

Who runs the ELS blog?

The ELS blog is a collaborative project produced by Professor Jason Czarnezki  of the Marquette University Law School, Professors Michael Heise and Theodore Eisenberg of the Cornell Law School, and William Ford, Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School.  Jason’s research uses empirical methodologies to assess the role of judicial selection, political ideology, and interpretive philosophy on judicial decision-making, as well as analyze the impact of institutional relationships on environmental and administrative law and regulatory policy.  Jason's research can be accessed on his SSRN Author Page.  Michael and Ted co-edit the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.  Michael's research, which can also be accessed via SSRN, focuses on bridging empirical methodologies and legal theory.  Ted is one of the foremost authorities on the use of empirical analysis in legal scholarship, and his research (available on SSRN)  has used innovative statistical methodology to shed light on such diverse subjects as punitive damages, victim impact evidence, capital juries, bias for and against litigants, and chances of success on appeal.  Bill is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, and his research focuses on judicial decision-making, public opinion, and intellectual property.

What is the ELS blog?

This first post is devoted to explaining why we started this web log.  We hope that the ELS blog will advance productive and interdisciplinary discourse among empirical legal scholars. We believe that this blog will be an especially worthwhile addition to legal and academic discourse at this time due to the recent creation of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, the emergence of empirical scholarship in the legal academy as evidenced by the 2006 American Association of Law Schools' Annual Meeting topic and empirical scholarship law school rankings, and the mainstream acceptance of web logs as successful means to convey current information of interest to the legal academy. The ELS blog serves as an online forum to discuss and provide links for emerging empirical legal scholarship, provide conference updates, discuss empirical claims that have emerged in public and political discourse, facilitate discussion for guest empirical scholars and assess current empirical findings and methodologies.